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<title>Distributed-memory FFTW with MPI (FFTW 3.3.10)</title>

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<span id="Distributed_002dmemory-FFTW-with-MPI"></span><div class="header">
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Next: <a href="Calling-FFTW-from-Modern-Fortran.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">Calling FFTW from Modern Fortran</a>, Previous: <a href="Multi_002dthreaded-FFTW.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Multi-threaded FFTW</a>, Up: <a href="index.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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<hr>
<span id="Distributed_002dmemory-FFTW-with-MPI-1"></span><h2 class="chapter">6 Distributed-memory FFTW with MPI</h2>
<span id="index-MPI"></span>

<span id="index-parallel-transform-1"></span>
<p>In this chapter we document the parallel FFTW routines for parallel
systems supporting the MPI message-passing interface.  Unlike the
shared-memory threads described in the previous chapter, MPI allows
you to use <em>distributed-memory</em> parallelism, where each CPU has
its own separate memory, and which can scale up to clusters of many
thousands of processors.  This capability comes at a price, however:
each process only stores a <em>portion</em> of the data to be
transformed, which means that the data structures and
programming-interface are quite different from the serial or threads
versions of FFTW.
<span id="index-data-distribution"></span>
</p>

<p>Distributed-memory parallelism is especially useful when you are
transforming arrays so large that they do not fit into the memory of a
single processor.  The storage per-process required by FFTW&rsquo;s MPI
routines is proportional to the total array size divided by the number
of processes.  Conversely, distributed-memory parallelism can easily
pose an unacceptably high communications overhead for small problems;
the threshold problem size for which parallelism becomes advantageous
will depend on the precise problem you are interested in, your
hardware, and your MPI implementation.
</p>
<p>A note on terminology: in MPI, you divide the data among a set of
&ldquo;processes&rdquo; which each run in their own memory address space.
Generally, each process runs on a different physical processor, but
this is not required.  A set of processes in MPI is described by an
opaque data structure called a &ldquo;communicator,&rdquo; the most common of
which is the predefined communicator <code>MPI_COMM_WORLD</code> which
refers to <em>all</em> processes.  For more information on these and
other concepts common to all MPI programs, we refer the reader to the
documentation at <a href="http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpi/">the MPI home
page</a>.
<span id="index-MPI-communicator"></span>
<span id="index-MPI_005fCOMM_005fWORLD"></span>
</p>

<p>We assume in this chapter that the reader is familiar with the usage
of the serial (uniprocessor) FFTW, and focus only on the concepts new
to the MPI interface.
</p>
<table class="menu" border="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="FFTW-MPI-Installation.html" accesskey="1">FFTW MPI Installation</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Linking-and-Initializing-MPI-FFTW.html" accesskey="2">Linking and Initializing MPI FFTW</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="2d-MPI-example.html" accesskey="3">2d MPI example</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="MPI-Data-Distribution.html" accesskey="4">MPI Data Distribution</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Multi_002ddimensional-MPI-DFTs-of-Real-Data.html" accesskey="5">Multi-dimensional MPI DFTs of Real Data</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Other-Multi_002ddimensional-Real_002ddata-MPI-Transforms.html" accesskey="6">Other Multi-dimensional Real-data MPI Transforms</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="FFTW-MPI-Transposes.html" accesskey="7">FFTW MPI Transposes</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="FFTW-MPI-Wisdom.html" accesskey="8">FFTW MPI Wisdom</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Avoiding-MPI-Deadlocks.html" accesskey="9">Avoiding MPI Deadlocks</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="FFTW-MPI-Performance-Tips.html">FFTW MPI Performance Tips</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="Combining-MPI-and-Threads.html">Combining MPI and Threads</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="FFTW-MPI-Reference.html">FFTW MPI Reference</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
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<tr><td align="left" valign="top">&bull; <a href="FFTW-MPI-Fortran-Interface.html">FFTW MPI Fortran Interface</a></td><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;</td><td align="left" valign="top">
</td></tr>
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Next: <a href="Calling-FFTW-from-Modern-Fortran.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">Calling FFTW from Modern Fortran</a>, Previous: <a href="Multi_002dthreaded-FFTW.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Multi-threaded FFTW</a>, Up: <a href="index.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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